


her indomitable spirit

by antivas



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Alternate Universe - Reincarnation, F/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-23
Updated: 2015-04-23
Packaged: 2018-03-25 08:30:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,957
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3803710
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/antivas/pseuds/antivas
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>But her eyes, when she opens them to look at him, her eyes are the deepest blue, pools of a dimming life.</p><p>He will never forget such blue.</p>
            </blockquote>





	her indomitable spirit

**Author's Note:**

> (spends almost five months on cullen fic)(writes this in two nights)(hasn’t even romanced solas) send h e l p
> 
> ps. this is basically solas-centric, lavellan ~reincarnates au, mixed with odd headcanons about elvhenan. ty for reading!

 

**(her indomitable spirit)**

 

Elvhenan is diseased. 

News of the people falling ill reaches Fen’harel’s ears and blinds him with rage. Arlathan has become a cesspool of everything dark in this world, touched by mortality. Its streets are drowned in the blood of its people, red where there was once gold, green. No longer can the guardians, the _gods_ deny it, and yet deny it they do.

Of course they do, he sneers; the ones who were meant to protect the people would be the ones to turn a blind eye to their folly. Simply because they drove Elvhenan to this state does not mean they need to acknowledge it.

Furious darkness cloaks Fen’harel as he walks the streets of the city he once loved. There are slums now, lower classes treated no better than flea-ridden dogs, cornered to the outer streets. The people are pale and sickly, gaunt from years of malnutrition and abuse. Seeing them divides him: he becomes equal parts rage and immeasurable sadness. Suffering elvhen, faces marred by markings of gods that have lusted too long for power—the people, _his_ people are enslaved and they do not even know it, so blind are they with misguided devotion.

He comes across the sickest, being treated by healers who look worked to the bone. He cannot fathom the depths of their exhaustion.

“How many have perished?” He asks.

One healer, bearing Sylaise’s bloodlines, gazes at him sullenly. “None yet,” she says. “Most we have stabilized. But there is one—I do not think she will survive the night.”

“Then she is—”

“—almost fully mortal, poisoned by a disease for which we have no cure. She has been fighting for a long time, my lord.”

The wolf in him howls in dismay. The pain is evident on his face; he can see it reflected in the healer’s eyes. She only offers him a look of tired pity.

“Take me to her,” he says.

The healer does as he asks. She leads him to the farthest cot, brushing aside the curtains of vines that keep its inhabitant hidden. The elf lying there looks barely alive; she is so thin that he could pick her up and snap her in half. Her skin is as white as halla fur, her hair matted—but her eyes, when she opens them to look at him, her eyes are the deepest blue, pools of a dimming life.

“I apologize,” she coughs. “I fear I won’t be good company this day. I’m a little tired.”

“You have nothing to be sorry for, lethallan,” he says helplessly.

He places his dark hand on her forehead and forces himself not to flinch. Skin that should be warm to the touch is cold as ice. Her growing-mortal frame has long stopped fighting its internal war. It won’t be long before her mind follows.

“It’s strange that you come here,” she says. “I would have thought if anyone, the lord Falon’din would have been the one to pay a visit.”

For her sake, he does not sneer his disgust. Friend of the dead, the people call Falon’din, _the guide_. Warmonger, Fen’harel calls him, bloodthirsty tyrant whose greed has driven him to madness more than once.

“You have not passed. He visits only those who need guidance through the veil,” he says.

“I have heard that he guides the dreamers when they enter uthenera, on journeys of enlightenment. I know it is fruitless to wonder what that is like, yet still my mind wanders...” She trails off, sighing. Her eyes are closing. 

“Sleep, lethallan,” he says softly, drawing glowing fingertips over the length of her face.

Her eyes close with the movement; her breathing evens. Slight color returns to her. The healer, having stood silently behind him the entire time, makes a sound of surprise. She skirts around him to check on her patient.

“She has entered uthenera,” he explains. The woman turns to him to see his heavy eyes igniting with renewed fury. “Keep her poison at bay. I will go to Mythal and Sylaise—we will find a cure for the diseased.”

“Of course,” the healer says faintly. “Ma serannas, my lord.”

Do not thank me, he thinks, for I let this happen by not stopping the pantheon when I had the chance. Instead, he nods his head and sweeps out of the room, drawing the darkness with him. He disappears in a swirl of shadow.

Time has no meaning to the elvhen. There is no urgency to their lifestyle, and merciful as Mythal and Sylaise are, they still do not work quickly. They have other battles to fight, just as he does, and can only dedicate small pockets of time to the cause. When he returns, it is years later. There are grave markings outside of the healers’ crumbling building. Mortality has claimed the lights of many in the years he was away.

The healer with Sylaise’s vallaslin is no longer there. There are many more in her place, with Falon’din’s and Dirthamen’s markings instead. One healer has Mythal’s branches on his cheeks but he is mute and cannot tell Fen’harel what happened to the healer he met many years ago, even if he wished to. Fen’harel is left with no choice but to ask one of Falon’din’s healer slaves.

“She died,” the woman says curtly. “Killed by the very illness she was trying to fight.”

“And the woman she was guarding, the one in uthenera, where is she?” Fen’harel asks.

She doesn’t bother to hide her disgust. “She’s also dead. Murdered in her sleep by another patient who went mad with jealousy. He died in the following days.”

He leaves the maws of decay, so angry that he feels empty. He sheds his elvhen form and bounds through the streets as the Dread Wolf, eyes burning with fury and jaw dripping with his own blood, drawn from biting the insides of his cheek.

This cannot go on. He will find the source of this sickness and bleed it dry. And then he will tear the monarchs from their thrones, one bitter battle at a time.

 —

 

Mythal is dead, the pantheon is banished, and all Fen’harel can see is red. Blood on his hands, spilled wine, red are his tears, anger is colored crimson—and autumn has arrived, bringing with it burned golds and scarlets. 

Elvhenan’s fall was slow and brutal. He can barely remember how many years have passed since he first stormed down his warpath, how many elves he has seen fall to mortality, how many sicknesses, bred in the darkened streets of Arlathan, have unleashed their fury upon the people. 

Still, he remembers the glory of Elvhenan. 

The  _former_ glory. 

His dry lips crack and red slips down his chin. How long has it been since he was last the wolf? The creature inside him wants out. He’s tempted to let it. But he’s so tired. Exhaustion collars the canine.

Twigs snap behind him. He whips around, lightning-quick, fire burning at his fingertips. Red meets blue. 

An elven woman crosses into the clearing. She is haggard and her movements are unsteady; her clothes are sticky with sweat and cling to her thin limbs. Her expression is one of panic, but her eyes, peacock blue, catch his without flinching. How can eyes be so calm while carrying in them such hopelessness? He could drown in her gaze. 

Shouts of a conquering language sound in the distance, coming closer. Soldiers from the fledgling Tevinter Imperium, no doubt, seeking to enslave all in their path, even those that have already escaped their chains once. Mythal’s indigo branches are tattooed on the woman’s cheeks.

Fen’harel draws on the fade around him, preparing for more bloodshed. His movements are heavy; he’s fought too many wars and given himself too little time to recover. (Exhaustion is not a canine collar, it is a noose.) The woman can see his weariness. It sets her shoulders and draws a determined hardness to her eyes. 

“Stop,” she says, her voice cracked. “Don’t fight. Go.”

Her words almost stop him. She cannot think that he, the bringer of rebellion, would leave her to slavers. She is one of the few left, the last of his people—

This is no time for incredulity, for indecision. 

“You cannot fight them on your own,” he argues.

 _“Run_ ,” she hisses back. 

She throws out a hand and a swell of magical force pushes him out of the clearing. It catches him by surprise; he doesn’t have time to defend himself, to stop it. When he regains his footing, he runs back in her direction, only to find a barrier in his way. He tries to break it but for all his power, for all his godhood, he cannot shatter the crystal. Not even when he helplessly beats his fist against it. 

On the other side, he hears screaming—and then abrupt silence. Still, the barrier stands. 

_Do not let her sacrifice be in vain._

He runs. With every step, the beast inside of him twists into something uglier. He does not stop until his elvhen body has been lost and all that is left is the wolf, howling loss to no one at all. 

 —

 

Fen’harel sleeps for thousands of years. Lost in uthenera with no guide, he wanders. he dreams. 

He has nightmares of blue eyes and women who tell him to run. 

Of blue eyes and women who are lost. 

Of a woman. 

Once, he thinks that he will be caught in uthenera for all eternity. He passes by the glowing exit many times, ignoring it for something different, something _better_. A memory of a crystal city, long gone. Of palaces floating in skies, shot down. Of greens and golds and diamond whites, erased. 

“Look at what your pride has wrought,” a ghostly figure of Elgar’nan tells him. 

“This is what _your_  pride has wrought,” he corrects. 

The irony is not lost on him when he leaves uthenera and renames himself Solas. 

 —

 

He has seen slaves worship their slavers, has seen the devout fall at the feet of their makers, but this—it draws jagged lines across his bitter soul. 

The free willingly ink slave markings onto themselves, claiming reverence to slavers as _gods_. 

His people are truly dead. All that is left are echoes, stories retold so often they have lost their meaning and their truth. Elves, not _elvhen_ , who dedicate their entire lives to following falsehoods. And if not them, the Dalish children, then all that is left are the city slaves who serve at the feet of their masters or are caught in circles of a different kind. 

Humans rule the former lands of Elvhenan with steel and all those who once were free are slaves either by deluded choice or force. 

This is everything he never wanted. 

Solas cannot even begin to form words to express the sheer sorrow that engulfs him. The longer he walks this world, the modern Thedas, the more regrets pile on his shoulders. Had he—could this be what his pride had wrought, after all? 

He observes an Arlathvhen once, from afar. The Fade is weak in this world and he is weak from his slumber, magic does not come as easily as it once did, nor does it feel the same, but he still manages to twist his surroundings to his liking so he can listen to what the clan elders, the Keepers, have to say. His shock at how wrong their words are distracts him; he loses his focus, his wariness. 

A small hand touches his leg. He startles, jerking back. When he looks down and sees startlingly blue eyes look back at him, he eases. It’s only a young girl, deeply tanned. He crouches down to her level. 

“Hahren,” she whispers, “you’re missing the stories.”

“So are you, da’len,” he replies. He offers her a little smile; the chiding in his tone is playful. 

“I’ve already heard them,” she says. 

“Is that so?” he says, arching a brow. “I suppose you’re learned in all the ways of the Dalish then.”

“Not _all_  of them,” she says. 

“Only some?”

She nods. “I’m going to be the First of my clan.”

“And one day you will be Keeper, telling the stories yourself,” he says. The blue eyes that look at him, so sharp, make his heart sink. “Tell me, da’len, what do you know of Arlathan?”

“The shem destroyed it,” she tells him. “The Dread Wolf tricked all the gods and locked them away, so there was no one who could protect it.”

“Of course,” he sighs. “Shall I tell you a secret?”

“I’m not good at keeping secrets. Keeper Deshanna says it’s why I’ll never get Dirthamen’s vallaslin,” she says. 

He cannot find it within himself to laugh. Instead, he forces a smirk. “That’s alright, da’len. I will tell you anyway. Fen’harel didn’t want Arlathan to be conquered. He made a mistake—a miscalculation that led to dire consequences.”

“Arlathan was still destroyed.” There is something old about her gaze, something ancient, rending a kind of judgment no young one, no _mortal_  one should be able to rend. 

“It was still a mistake,” he says, helplessly. 

She shrugs. “Alright. I’ll ask Keeper Deshanna about it.” 

There isn’t anything more to say. Solas rises, his height towering over her. Once he was frightening, a wolf caught in a form of ebony skin and bones weaved into hair; now he is a shell of his former self, more man than beast. He feels less hunter and more prey. 

“Are you leaving?” She asks. 

“I must go,” he replies. “I have much work to do.”

“Oh. Well—dareth shiral, Hahren,” she says. 

“Dareth shiral, da’len,” he says, and softer still: “Ir abelas.”

If she hears him, she doesn’t say anything. The only response he gets is blue eyes watching, a burning gaze on his back as he walks away. 

 —

 

When he sleeps, he drifts into the Fade and wanders, not unlike walking the endless passages of uthenera. The only difference is in the Fade, there are demons, spirits—and memories. 

Solas gets caught in the Fade too many times, reliving times that he has lost. Echoes of what once was live on in a dreamy haze. Too many years slip by.

He spends his waking days searching for someone who wants to bring back what was lost. He does not find an elf who can do it—although he does find Mythal, joined to the body of a human who lusts for revenge—so he settles instead for a creature that is not entirely mortal. He gifts them his orb, in hopes that he will regain his power so that he can reshape the world that this being will bring to life.  

His hopes are shattered when an explosion rips into the Veil and breaks apart the sky. And his soul weeps, it wails when the only survivor, a Dalish woman with Mythal’s vallaslin on her cheeks, opens her eyes for the first time after the Conclave’s destruction. 

Why do they have to be _blue_?

 —

 

Her name is Lavellan and she makes him forget what it’s like to see only red. She makes him remember what color is, what it means to trust, how it feels to be happy. 

He means it with every fiber of his being when he tells her he loves her. 

Lavellan smiles and he almost believes that the world is whole again. 

 —

 

“I wonder if I haven’t misjudged the Dalish,” he says to her. She is resting in his chair while he paints his walls green and gold. 

“Oh?” she hums. 

“They raised a spirit like you, who shows a wisdom I haven’t seen since—my deepest journeys into the ancient memories of the Fade.”

“They may not be perfect, but at least they try,” she says. Her brows furrow. To herself she mumbles: “They? _We_.”

He’s lost again, trained on her voice instead of his actions. He dips his paintbrush into water and then sweeps it across the wall, unthinking. The colors run together. There is no red, there is no blue, there is only muddy darkness. He’ll have to start over.

 —

 

Leaving her is the hardest thing he’s ever had to do. 

It’s like leaving the ocean and throwing oneself into the path of a forest fire. He’s tried to heal a burn before even acquiring it. Once again, as is his curse, he has gone about things in the wrong order and left only destruction in his wake. If her hurt is anything like his, it is a festering wound that will cripple if not treated. 

His will cripple him. He hopes that hers doesn’t do the same. There are now two things that he wishes for: to rescue the people by recreating what he stole from them, and for her to be happy. Her blue eyes should sparkle with joy, not sadness. He has seen them sorrowful for millennia—and they have deserved better for even longer. 

Mythal gives him her power and he is restored. He feels empty the first time he molds his body into the form of a wolf; not angry, not free, just empty. He runs for miles and feels nothing. 

He howls, lonely. Not even the wind answers him. 

 —

 

Lavellan finds him in the Emerald Graves, licking wounds that he hadn’t even known he’d had. He imagines the sight is pathetic, but what little pride he has doesn’t care. Perhaps he named himself wrongly, after all. 

“You aren’t easy to find, let alone follow,” she says. 

“You seem to have managed,” he replies. 

“I always do,” she murmurs. 

Her fingers come to touch her cheeks, an instinctive reaction. She drops them quickly, once she remembers that her markings are no longer there. Another thing he has taken from her. 

“Ir abelas,” he says.  _For everything_. 

She shakes her head. “I’m glad I caught up to you. I hope you’ll let me help you make a mess. I’d rather that than be left to clean it up alone. Didn’t I tell you once that we would fix things together?” 

“This is my fight, vhenan. It is something I must do alone,” he says. “I cannot allow you to get caught in it.”

“No one person can change the world. Not for the good,” she replies. “We’ve both seen what happens when one person tries.” 

Words refuse to leave him. His own body, traitorous. 

She settles down on her knees in front of him, bringing herself to his level. Her hands, warm where his are cold, cover his.

“The first time we met, I knew you wanted to right all the wrongs in the world. That you would stop at nothing until you could not only heal the wounds of your people, but reverse time so that they never received the wounds in the first place,” she says gently. “You are as much a bringer of rebellion as you are a healer.”

“…What do you mean?” he asks warily.

“What I mean,” she says, smiling wryly, “is that you haven’t changed so much that I cannot recognize you, Dread Wolf. Although when we first met, you were the dark one and I was pale. Have you spent so much time in the shadow that it’s stolen your color?”

“I’ve spent as much time in the shadows as you have in the sun, vhenan,” he says. “How long have you known?”

“The pieces started to come together the night you disappeared. I was on my balcony, watching the sunrise, when I remembered.”

“You never cease to surprise me,” he says, lifting his hand to tenderly cup her cheek. Something within him, a tension that stayed his heart, eases when she leans into him. “I did mean it when I said you possess an indomitable spirit.”

She huffs a laugh. “A spirit that won’t be content until it lives a full life, apparently. A life with the one it loves above all.”

“Vhenan—”

“You said to me that in another world, we could be together. How many worlds must I walk?” Her eyes are sharp, sad. “I’ve followed you for so long, Solas. Through countless lifetimes. I am tired of it—I don’t want to follow you, I want to walk at your side.”

“I want you at my side,” he whispers painfully, “but I have not yet seen my task through.”

“Your task?”

“You said I am a healer. I cannot stop until I heal the people. I stole their glory from them—now I must return it.”

“Most of the people are gone, Solas. They crossed the Veil a long time ago.”

“Some remain, still in uthenera. I must find them, awaken them.”

“And then what? You’ll recreate Arlathan for them?” Her voice is a blade, slicing at him mercilessly. She realizes it and tempers her tone. “Listen to me, Solas. All empires crumble eventually. You cannot bring back what was lost, nor should you. Elvhenan was beautiful from the outside but poisonous within. The only difference between it and Tevinter is that the Imperium isn’t discrete about its manner of slavery. If you want to bring back the glory of the people, don’t start by resurrecting a tainted society. Start by helping the elves that still live—teach the Dalish, free the enslaved, better the lives of the city dwellers. You cannot ignore the majority in favor of a sleeping minority.”

“It’s not so easy to abandon the path I’ve been walking for so long. The path I’ve set,” he says weakly.

“It’s not so much abandoning your path as it is changing its direction,” she replies. Her gaze softens. “You’ve changed it before. The only difference is, this time you’ll have me walking down it with you. No more orbs of power, no more trickery. From now on, between us there will only be truth.”

“You know the orb was mine,” he murmurs.

“You left me enough clues,” she says, quirking a smirk.

She takes his hand away from her cheek and instead laces their fingers together. Her presence is stabling. It is _filling._ The emptiness within him is leaving, the dread dissipates—he is more when she is with him.

“There is one thing I never figured out,” she says. “How did you know it was me?”

“I’m not one to forget someone who has saved me so many times.”

“I saved you _once_ ,” she retorts. “Tell me the truth!”

 _You saved me countless times._ “Your eyes,” he says, squeezing their interlaced fingers. “I could never forget such blue.”

She smiles. Her eyes are sparkling, a warm ocean. If it means being able to see her like this, happy and strong and _alive_ , he will never see red again.

“I suppose I should ask: what should I call you? Solas, Fen’harel—something else?” She asks.

“You could call me Harellan and I would still respond,” he says, knocking his forehead against hers. There is a little wolf in him yet, mischievous, freed from his shackles.

She laughs. “May I call you vhenan?”

“I’d like nothing more.”

 —

 

He has learned in his many years that red alone is not enough. Blue is more likely to stand strong by itself, but even so—both red and blue prefer the color they make when they come together.

Violet is the color of magic. It is the color of royalty. It is the color of pride and devotion and peace. And greatest of all, _dearest_ of all, it is the color that’s theirs.

The fight will not be easy, nor will it be short, and the path is wrought with peril.

Still, it is theirs to walk. And this time, they walk it together.

 

  _end._


End file.
